Slices or One Loaf?

Reading Amount:

John 6:1-10:42

Central Verse:

And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day…I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. - John 6:39; 51

Central Truth:

Christ has come to save all, and all means all! The intent of Jesus' mission while fraught with misunderstanding is to bring life.

Food for Thought: (Questions about the text)

We are to understand what Jesus says about bread and wine, flesh and blood on two levels; literally with the bread and wine and figuratively as the symbol of communion. We must allow John to challenge our understandings of communion today. John's view of communion is not the same as the other gospels and offers challenges to our preconceived notions of communion.

Connections: (Time with our society)

It has been easy over the last few hundred years to relegate communion as the work of just pastors, or it’s something that only believers can participate in. We see here in the gospel of John that communion was giving not to a few (just the disciples like in Matthew, Mark and Luke) but to the crowed. It is not limited to a few but given to the many.

In our churches and society today we seem to have a penchant for excluding others. We create groups where we only have to socialize and understand things the same way. Here in these few chapters of John Jesus challenges our understanding of who is included by God and how that inclusion happens. One of the things that are the most clear, as seen in verse 39, is that Jesus is working to lose no one. Jesus is trying to bring all people to himself.

So the question is what does that say to our society and church with its emphasis on sectarianism and divisions? If Jesus is there and as it seems in these passages bringing people together by using such common things as bread and wine what are we doing when we divide? How should we balance that?

It seems to me in a way we must wonder how it is we understand the communion bread. Is it one loaf that we break and share together or is it slices of bread that we enjoy individually? For John it’s both. Jesus' presence is given to us in the elements as something we are to enjoy and experience together, but as we see in these verses it’s also something we experience individually as we learn and understand God's presence and work in our lives.

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